ON August 27th we commemorate the countless LGBT people who have been persecuted and executed in Iran, Iraq, Syria and other countries ... many of these innocent martyrs were teenagers.
Iran still regularly kills minors no matter what international law says. Amnesty International recently decried the hanging of gay Iranian teenager, Hassan Afshar, as proof of the country's "sickening enthusiasm for putting juveniles to death that knows no bounds."
Several years ago ... 19 July 2005 ... Iran publicly executed two teenage boys for being gay. Their names were MAHMOUD ASGARI and AYAZ MARHONI, 16 and 18 years old.
Since then many more LGBT people have been tortured, imprisoned and publicly executed in Iran ... no one knows how many.
For their suffering, the Religion of Antinous proclaims Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni and all of the named and unnamed gay victims of Iranian persecution, Saints and Innocent Martyrs of the Religion of Antinous.
Putting to death any juvenile violates United Nations covenants. Still, Iran hasn't shied from the most extreme penalty when prosecuting even the youngest men for gay sex and other crimes under Islamic law.
An Amnesty International report in January found that four people were killed last year despite being juveniles at the time of their crime. And between 2005 and 2015, 73 were executed.
In this latest case, Afshar was charged at age 17 with raping another boy. His family said it was consensual, which is sometimes a moot point. If the other boy hadn't called it "rape" instead of consensual sex, he too could have faced the death penalty.
Amnesty International reports that Afshar was hanged in Arak's Prison in Markazi Province on July 18.
Another teen, Alireza Tajiki, is next in line for execution, accused of raping and murdering a friend.
Amnesty International notes that Iran’s Supreme Court had said there's no evidence Tajiki committed the crime, and it says a confession is invalid because it was provoked by torture.
International outrage over Afshar’s death has so far managed to put the next killing on hold.
A rare photo of one of these executions (seen above) outraged the world in 2005, when a blindfolded Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, were publicly hanged in Mashhad, Iran, on charges of raping boys. The photos might have stopped, but the killings haven't.
A United Nations report in 2014 reported that 160 young men are on death row in Iran having been convicted of a myriad of crimes. Another United Nations investigation this year found that the death penalty reached a 20-year high in 2015, with 966 people killed.
Under Islamic law, these offenses — called hodud — can include "insulting the Prophet of Islam," extra-marital heterosexual sex, and consensual gay sex. Under hodud, death is one of four possible punishments, which could also include crucifixion, banishment, and amputating the right arm and left leg.
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